“Lies That Comfort and Betray” is the second in Rosemary Simpson’s “Gilded Age Mystery” series featuring socialite detective Prudence MacKenzie and her partner, former Pinkerton, Geoffrey Hunter. The mystery takes place in New York City of 1888 where murders that seem to mimic the MO of London’s Ripper occur with chilling regularity.? Once difference from the London Whitechapel cases is that the women being strangled and disemboweled are not all hookers, but rather church-going domestic servants, including one that often works for Miss MacKenzie.

After a tip is received from a homeless man with a delightfully perceptive mutt names Blossom, it becomes clear that the one common denominator is that all three women had been at confession at the same church (St. Anselm) shortly before being attacked.? In two cases the women are killed somewhere other than where they are left and in the case of the one prostitute who is murdered, she is left where she is killed in her room at a neighborhood brothel.

Are the police with the assistance of Hunter and MacKenzie facing the actual Jack the Ripper?? Is a priest involved and is the church covering up for a member of the clergy?? Is the serial killer the son of a prominent citizen? Is more than one suspect involved? The plot twists and turns leaving the reader convinced at one moment that it is one suspect and the next another seems most likely the one responsible.

As horrifyingly graphic as this tale is, the book was hard to put down until the killer is revealed and the characters the reader comes to care about are safe and sound.

A good read that reveals much historically about New York City in the Gilded Age and the seamier side of life for those in domestic service, trapped in prostitution or homelessness and how members of the clergy turned a blind eye to it all.? Recommended, but not for younger readers.

In the second “A Knight and Moon Novel” Janet Evanovich has gone back to writing without a partner.? “Dangerous Minds” as a result is back to standard Evanovich formulas for creating quirky characters and fast moving, adventurous plots that keep the reader turning page after page.? This is the most enjoyable Evanovich novel in a long time.

The series revolves around a young billionaire amateur investigator, Emerson Knight, and his assistant, Riley Moon, a Harvard graduate originally from Texas. Their side-kicks on this zany adventure are Emerson’s eccentric childhood friend, Vernon, and Vernon’s friend, a little monk from Bali named Wayan Bagus.? Bagus asked the team to find an island near Samoa he was living on that disappeared after it was invaded by some military-like men with strange tattoos on their wrists.? These quasi-military men turn out to be a secret society off-shoot of the Rough Riders founded by Teddy Roosevelt in the Spanish-American War.? They wear National Park Service uniforms and appear to have the run of several very remote parts of Yellowstone in Wyoming and Mauna Kea on the big island of Hawaii.

I don’t want to give away the plot but suffice it to say, there’s a particularly crazy bad man, not unlike Dr Strangelove, who wants to destroy the world with some “strange matter” that is found in volcanoes that have active magma from the core of the earth bubbling up to the surface occasionally.

Those readers who like Evanovich’s quirky characters, weird plots and breezy dialog will love “Dangerous Minds.”

The story explores the relationship between the attorneys in a law firm and the businesses that are part of a large conglomerate that is represented by one of those attorneys.? Are the other attorneys in the group ethically forbidden to represent someone who is suing one subordinate company when another attorney in the practice is representing the larger holding company? Bennie Rosato says that her partner, Mary DiNunzio must turn down the case of an old family friend when he is fired from his job very obviously as a result of the extremely expensive medical treatment that employee’s daughter needs. Mary maintains that it is one of those questions that legally could go either way.

“Exposed” is about legal ethics, what constitutes a conflict of interest in a law practice, questions of loyalty, and building deeper relationships both within the practice and with clients. It leads to murders and danger of losing not only the practice but also life for Bennie and Mary because the stakes are very high for both the plaintiff and the defendant in the case of whether the firing was legal or not. The action keeps the reader on the edge throughout and makes this a fast read.

In the end it really brings Mary and Bennie closer together as friends and partners because they have had to resolve life and death issues both personally and in terms of their practice.

It looks like the special forces will be featured in a couple of new TV shows this fall.? This has always been a popular type of thriller whether it is seen on TV, film or in books.? I have recently completed three military/Tier One/Black Ops thrillers each of which will appeal to a big segment of the thriller audience.

The oldest of these is “Tier One” by Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson, published in 2016 by Thomas Mercer.? Wilson and Andrews are both U.S. Navy vets and it is clear they know the weaponry and the lingo.? “Tier One” is about a former Navy SEAL in one of the Tier One, “black” units who’s team mates are killed as the result of an Iranian mole within their tactical operation center in Djibouti.? He is given a new identity and becomes part of an even blacker operation with even fewer checks and balances on their actions as they go after the ones responsible for the mole operation and stave off another major attack on New York City.? “Tier One” makes one look at certain ethical questions surrounding black operations encompased in a quote by Dwight D. Eisenhower that appears at the beginning of Part III: “‘The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defent from without.'”? Good question.

A new “Steve Stilwell Thriller” called “Sapphire Pavilion” by David E Grogan is perhaps my favorite of the three.? “Sapphire Pavilion” was the name given a highly classified mission in Vietnam in 1968.? While this is fictional, it reads as total plausible.? The operation starts out with a C-130 cargo plane, its crew and a mysterious passenger which is torpedoed out of the sky over Vietnam in January 1968.? The plane and the bodies were MIA until 30 years later when the son of the pilot took a trip to Vietnam with a retired Navy JAG advisor to look for the wreckage.? They found graves for the crew, but were sabbotaged in Ho Chi Minh City when they returned from the bush.? The son of the pilot was found dead in his hotel room with a prostitute waiting for the return of the former Navy attorney and luggage full of heroin.? The authorities hold the former JAG officer, Ric Stokes, for murder and drug trafficking, capital offenses.? The officer’s wife asks Steve Stilwell, an attorney in Williamsburg, VA and former Navy JAG officer, to take the case.? At times the case looks hopeless, but with good legal support from Steve’s new assistant attorney, Casey Pantel, they discover who at the State Department can unlock the mystery behind “Sapphire Pavilion” that will lead to Ric’s freedom.? This book is a page-turner and hard to put down until the very end.

The third book is to be published Sept. 5, “Into a Dark Frontier” by John Mangan.? Like the other authors, Mangan has military experience having retired as a decorated combat rescue pilot. This book has an interesting dystopian premise that most of the African continent has fallen into chaos because of the blockage of ports, closure of refineries, and loss of power.? The governments have disintegrated and roaming bands of brigands, despots and soldiers of fortune rule and make existence impossible for natives as well as would-be pioneers from other parts of the world.? Millions have been brutally killed.? “Into a Dark Frontier” is extremely graphic as it tells the story of a disgraced former Navy SEAL named Slade Crawford who joins up as security advisor for a Christian cult called the Judeans who set off from the U.S. to South Africa with a vision of resettling in Malawi.? All the Judeans follow the fate of the members of several other settlements and are either skewered alive on stakes, burned to death or taken into Nairobi to serve as sex slaves.? The real villains of “Into a Dark Frontier” are the “One World” proponents, according to the author, who seems to believe that organizations like the UN and NATO are out to remove individual freedoms.? I find it hard to be as cynical as the author or his protagonist, Crawford.? Still, I give it at least a one thumb up because this book will appeal to a certain segment of the population who deeply suspect government and feel pessimistic about the retention of our civil liberties as we have them today (or think we have them.)

Ariana Franklin, best selling author of medieval thrillers, died while writing “The Seige Winter” in 2011. It was completed and published by Ariana’s daughter Samantha Norman.

The narrator of the story is William, Abbot of Perton Abbey around 1180 a.d., who is telling the story on his death bed for a young monk to transcribe. The story is one about his family and their household about 40 years earlier, during the wars between the daughter of Henry I, Matilda, and her cousin, Stephen. Henry on his death bed had declared Matilda his heir, but most of the barons of the land refused to swear alliegance to a woman and selected Stephen instead. It was a time of great hardship as nobles loyal to Matilda were beseiged by Stephen’s superior troops and villages were plundered and burned.

One of the casualties during this time was the rape of a young girl in the Fens by a bunch of mercenaries led by a murderous monk loyal to Stephen. One of the mercenary archers, Gwil, took pitty on the girl and defected in order to take care of her and to get her to safety. He called the girl Penda since she could not remember her own name or the horrendous circumstances that caused her to be separated from her people. To keep her safe on the road, Gwil insisted she disguise herself as a boy, and he taught her archery skills so that she would have a way of making a living. After some years on the road as entertainers, they were forced into the company of a group of nobles who were fleeing from mercenaries, a group that happened to include Empress Matilda herself. They all fled to Kenniford Castle, the home of Maud of Kenniford. The Abbot, William, was the young boy at the time of the story who was Maud’s stepson.

One theme in this novel is about the place of women in medieval Anglo-Saxon and Norman society and how some were able to transcend their station in life through happenstance of birth and through hard work, skill and some degree of deception. There are several very strong women role-models in this story, all of whom are to a large degree feared and admired by William.

There is considerable tension in this thriller as the reader waits for the inevitable second face-off between Penda and the murderous monk.

“The Seige Winter” is well-crafted and informative about a period in history that was fundamental to the formation of the powerful Norman baronies in England during the Middle Ages. It keeps readers on the edge of their seats to discover what will happen to several favorite characters, including Penda, Gwil, Maud and her love interest, Sir Alan.

Anyone who has been around this blog for long will know that Eliot Pattison is one of my favorite contemporary mystery writers. I look forward to new additions to both his Bone Rattler and his Inspector Shan Tao Yun Mystery series. “Skeleton God” is the ninth in the Inspector Shan series, and it is perhaps the best one yet because of the depth that it plumbs into the Tibetan culture and psyche.

His protagonist, Shan Tao Yun, is a Chinese former police inspector from Beijing who has been banished to the hinterlands of Tibet for many years. Shan has taken his banishment as an opportunity to get to know and understand the Tibetan people and their traditions. Shan has been through a lot. He has spent time at hard labor in a Tibetan prison camp. He has been a closely watched road inspector. He is now the police inspector for a small Tibetan town that has been partly repopulated by Chinese nationals. He now has the problem of getting the Tibetans in the surrounding community to trust him even though he now wears the uniform of a Chinese policeman.

The people that Shan wants to know better over the course of “Skeleton God” are the “ferals,” the Tibetan people who have refused to give an oath of loyalty to the Chinese government and have been forced out of their homes because of their lack of fealty to China. These ferals are keepers of the ruins of old Buddhist shrines and monestaries. One particular retired Chinese general, Lau, is dead-set on wiping out all of these ferals and taking any remaining gold or other treasure from these holy sites. Shan is dead-set upon preserving as much of the old Tibetan culture as he can without forfeiting his own life or endangering the life of his son, who is now in the same prison Shan inhabited for many years. Shan has somewhat of a protector in the form of Colonel Tan, the governor of Lhadrung County. Tan is a very complex anti-hero who is sometimes very helpful and at other times very cruel and thoughtless.

“Skeleton God” provides the reader with much to think about: the cruel way Tibetan culture is being stamped out by the Chinese overlords; the corruption that goes on within the ranks of the Chinese rulers in Tibet; how the need for freedom serves as an enduring beacon of light for the human spirit in not only the Tibetan people but also many of the Chinese and many of the people from around the world who risk their lives to travel to that country.

I have spoken in the past with Eliot Pattison about his experiences in Tibet and I know that through his fictional characters and the situations that they find themselves entwined in, there is a lot of cultural accuracy and historical fact. Pattison’s Inspector Shan series is important for anyone to read who has an interest in Tibet and the Tibetan people–and that should be all of us!

When I read something I think is just “so-so” I often don’t bother to write a review. There just isn’t enough interesting to say sometimes to make a review worthwhile. That applies in my opinion to “Baker Street Irregulars,” a group of short stories that all take off on the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.

Most of these stories go too far-afield for my taste. The authors seem to vie for who can make the most macabre, weird or different Holmes and Watson. I’m more about the story than the character and I did not see enough meat in any of the stories to keep my interest. There was lots to hate about many of the characterizations of Holmes and Watson– but then maybe I’m a purist when it comes to the great detective Sherlock Holmes.

We see Holmes as Shirley Holmes in the first story, the Great Investigator of the planets of the great star Alpha Ganston in the second, a more familiar Holmes in the 3rd story, a vampire Holmes in the 4th, a robot Holmes in the 5th, and so on.

I long for the neurotic bachelor Sherlock Holmes of 1890’s London and mystery stories based on his fantastic powers of observation.

But, again, I’m old fashioned.

I give “Baker Street Irregulars” a thumbs down even though I am sure there are some who would find some of the stories very funny and original.

After 8 years of writing mystery and thriller reviews I felt a need for a rest. My mother died in late February and work to do to setter her affairs. There were taxes to complete and also a new business to start so my reading time was curtailed for a couple months. When I finally emerged with enough time to read books again I found a challenge that was not exactly in the mystery genre, although there are murders, mysteries and swashbuckling thriller plots throughout. I took up the challenge of reading all 8 of the books in Diane Gabaldon’s “Outlander” series– not a small task as most of her books in this series are over 1000 pages in length.

I have just completed number six in the series, “A Breath of Snow and Ashes” and I think other than the first book, “Outlander,” this is my favorite. “A Breath of Snow and Ashes” finds the entire Fraser family together on Fraser’s Ridge in the wilds of colonial North Carolina where Jamie has been granted a large range of land to parcel out to other Highlander settlers and eventually a variety of other pioneers. The Highlanders all share something in common: in order to be allowed to emigrate they had to swear allegiance to the British king. The tenor of the times, 1767-1776, makes it increasingly difficult to keep up loyalty to the crown. Claire and Jamie’s daughter, Brianna, and the man she meets in 20th century Scotland, Roger, like Claire, time travel through a Celtic stone circle in order to find Brianna’s father and her mother who traveled back in time earlier. They need to warn them of a news clipping from 1776 that suggests Claire and Jamie will be killed in a fire in their home at Fraser’s Ridge in January of 1776 and they want to stop the disaster from happening. Do they survive? You must read to the end of the sixth book to find out!

Meanwhile, there are a variety of heart-pounding narrow escapes, murder plots and mayhem to keep the incredibly detailed plot threads moving along so that it is very hard to put the book down, and especially this sixth novel in the series. Claire gets kidnapped by some militiamen who do not care for Fraser and his family. She is accused of killing a young woman who serves as Claire’s apprentice healer, Malva Christie, and Claire is taken to New Bern to be tried. Brianna, earlier in the book, is kidnapped by a smuggler and there is some question initially as to whether Brianna’s son, born 9 months later, is actually the smuggler’s or Roger’s. There’s a mystery surrounding the appearance of a skull with a distinctly modern set of teeth and eventually that mystery is revealed by other time-travelers who demand Claire’s help in getting back to the 20th century.

As much as I enjoy reading about the amazing Fraser family, I am going to get back into reviewing newer mysteries and thrillers now. A large number are still stacked up waiting for my attention. But for those who are as hooked on the “Outlander” series as I am, and eagerly await the third season of the Starz drama (should coincide with the third book “Voyager“) I do particularly recommend the sixth book “A Breath of Snow and Ashe” which is set in colonial North Carolina.

Brian Freeman is a Minnesota-based author. This is the second in his Frost Eaton detective triller series. Eaton is a handsome, single, cat-loving San Francisco police detective, a very likeable character. The latest in the series, “The Night Bird” was just published February 1 by Thomas Mercer.

“Night Bird” is a very scary psychological thriller about a serial killer who copies the techniques of a San Francisco psychiatrist, Francesca Stein, but with an evil intention. Stein uses hypnosis and subliminal messaging to erase disturbing memories from patients and replace them with memories that will stop the phobias that developed around the trauma. The psychotic maniac, instead, uses hypnosis and psychological and sensory torture to cause some of Stein’s patients to commit suicide upon command. The killer wears a mask, which in San Francisco, does not cause a lot of notice. He calls himself the “Night Bird” and uses all manner of technological tricks to spy on his victims and on Dr. Stein so that he knows what will trigger anxiety in the patients who become his targets. One of the songs he uses to trigger suicidal events in his victims is the song “Nightengale” by Carole King. I don’t think I will ever be able to listen to that song again without thinking of this book!

It does not take long to get really sucked into this book. One reason is the main characters all have interesting lives and stories built around their own unique situations so it became easy to feel empathy for some characters and disgust and revulsion for others. The characters are all memorable whether they are heroes or villains. One way or the other, the reader can picture these characters living and working in San Francisco. The author appears to know the city well, even though he lives in Minnesota.

I am not totally convinced about the premise of the book that people who have been traumatized can be made to totally forget those traumatic experiences through hypnosis, drugs and subliminal suggestion, but I am willing to suspend my skepticism for the purposes of getting into the plot. The premise is similar to that of the successful new TV show, “Blindspot.” There are some nice twists to the plot as well that keep the reader guessing until the end.

Overall, Freeman has a winner with “The Night Bird.” It should be a hit with those who like to stay up late reading a real page-turner of a psychological thriller that will remain vividly in the memory bank for a long time to come.

The Longmire series got another new addition last fall with “An Obvious Fact.” The name is derived from a Sherlock Holmes quote, “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.” The setting is western South Dakota/eastern Wyoming around Hulett and the Devils Tower, an impressive shaft of igneous rock that shoots out of the plains unexpectedly, and the site of the nation’s first national monument. The other major setting is Sturgis, SD, the site of the annual motorcycle meet.

The biking events and the general Wyoming/South Dakota Black Hills location affords the author a lot of colorful characters to populate this mystery and Henry Standing Bear is entered in some of the biker events while Walt Longmire helps the Hulett police investigate why a young member of one motorcycle gang and the son of one of Henry’s former lovers, has been run off the road. The young man is in a coma at a hospital in Rapid City. Tension mounts as Lola, the youth’s mother implies that Henry was the father some 30 years earlier.

As always, this chapter in the Longmire saga is full of sage wisdom from the Indian philosopher, and hard fighting from both Henry and Walt. “An Obvious Fact” a sufficiently fast-paced page-turner to please fans of the Walt Longmire series and could win over new fans because of the colorful setting and interesting situations Henry and Walt continue to get involved in.